In a recent presentation, Michael Miller of the Germans from Russia
Heritage Collection, spoke of his Oral History Project. He commented
wryly that he always knew interviews had run their course when the
interviewees started talking about their kids. Well, one of those
“kids,” born in 1956 and 50 years old in the year of
this book’s
publication, has finally spoken out about her heritage as she remembers
it--three generations removed from the original immigrants--and
it’s
not a lame account.

Debra Marquart, who teaches English at Iowa State University in
Ames,
Iowa, has pulled together her writing, most of which originally
appeared in other publications, and produced this, her fourth book.
She
slashes, pushes back, probes, philosophizes, and fantasizes as she
remembers growing up the fifth and last child of German Russian
farmers
bent on keeping the farm in the family. It was land acquired during
the
homesteading period by her paternal immigrant grandfather Joseph
Marquart. Working incredibly hard, her family was/is committed to
wresting grain and milk from a farm located near Napoleon on the
rolling Missouri Escarpment that runs northwest-southeast across
a
swath of North Dakota, She tells of picking rocks (they push to
the
surface every year from the depths of the glacier-deposited hills),
hefting bales, butchering chickens, driving the tractor, spreading
bedding for livestock with a pitchfork,... All the while plotting
her
escape.

And escape she did, noting that the view of North Dakota she liked
best at the time was the sight she saw while adjusting her car’s
rear
view mirror. She went to college, joined a rock band when she was
a
handful of credits shy of graduation, married--twice, became a teacher
at the university level, and has written some widely-received books.
Now, in this book, she reflects on her heritage of family and ethnicity
and place and what its meaning has been for her.

She tells a story familiar to German Russians everywhere: "My
great-grandmother came to this country, as all of my mother’s
family
did, from Lutheran villages in the Glueckstal region of New Russia,
west of the Dniester River on the Black Sea. My great-grandfather,
Frederick Hoffer,...had immigrated to Dakota Territory in 1899 with
his two brothers." pp123-4.

"My great-grandmother, Barbara Hulm Marquart, did not leave
Russia by
choice. I know that now. She left Kandel, her village on the steppes
near the Black Sea, to follow my great-grandfather Joseph who was
on
the run from forced induction into the Russian army." p 144.
Kandel was
a Catholic village, and the complications created by this "mixed
marriage" were part of what shaped her.

Says Marquart: "...I think about the generations of my family
who
have dedicated their lives to keeping their name tied to this parcel
of
land for 110 years, using all their strength, resources, energy,
and
imagination to outwit the forces, natural or otherwise, that would
so
easily strip us of this sense of belonging. And I think about how
I
have benefitted from the sense of rootedness that this place has
afforded me as I have cast about, rootless in the world." p24.

As do many others who read her book and those written by Kathleen
Norris, author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, I saw many connections
with her. A heritage rooted in German villages on the steppes of
Russia, young life on a farm on the Missouri Escarpment (in my case,
where it crosses the southern portion of Ward County), the need
to keep
the land in the family, religion and conformity as central values,...
And we won’t forget how wary I was of the farm boys and how
cautious I
was of lapses that might have blocked my escape to the larger outside
world.

This is not a book for the faint of heart; Marquart does not cater
to
a German Russian reader who shares her ethnic background and prefers
things all tidy and clean. She rebelled hard against her farm
upbringing and she tells of doing wild things that would earn the
disapproval of elders today as they did when she was a teen. Marquart’s
writing is polished, professional. A fine addition to the memoir
genre.

Permission
to use any images from the GRHC website may be requested
by contacting Michael
M. Miller